Your Reference Library

[albion]

Excluding biographies and single-composer studies/ catalogues, I'd be interested to learn which publications members possess and find most useful when trying to obtain information about unsung composers in areas of interest to them?

With the above exclusions applied, my reference library is fairly limited since the hinterland of British music has not, unfortunately, captured the imagination of many researchers, but the following are probably the most useful items on the shelf:

Brown, A. Peter: The Symphonic Repertoire IIIB - The European Symphony c. 1800 to c.1930 - Great Britain, Russia and France (Indiana, 2008)
Brown, James & Stratton, Stephen: British Musical Biography (Stratton, 1897)
Cox, David: The Henry Wood Proms (BBC, 1980)
Ehrlich, Cyril: First Philharmonic - A History of the Royal Philharmonic Society (OUP, 1995)
Foreman, Lewis: Music in England 1885-1920 (Thames, 1994)
Ganzl, Kurt: The British Musical Theatre I, 1865-1914 (MacMillan, 1986)
Grove (fifth edition on paper and New Grove online)
Lloyd, Stephen: Sir Dan Godfrey - Champion of British Composers (Thames, 1995)
Musgrave, Michael: The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace (CUP, 1995)
Scholes, Percy: The Mirror of Music 1844-1944 (Novello, 1947)
Smither, Howard: A History of the Oratorio IV - The Oratorio in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (North Carolina, 2000)
Temperley, Nicholas (ed): The Blackwell History of Music in Britain V - The Romantic Age 1800-1914 (Blackwell, 1988)

[Dundonnell]

Is there not a book by Jurgen Schaarwachter which is often quoted?

Never seen it myself.

[britishcomposer]

The book by Jürgen Schaarwächter, 'Die britische Sinfonie 1914-1945 ', dates from 1995. He quotes a lot of rare source material and offers some, albeit sparse analyses. However, is approach is often VERY idiosyncratic. E. g. he calls RVW 'Williams' instead of 'Vaughan Williams' and the like...

[albion]

His Die britische Sinfonie 1914-1945 (Verlag Dohr, Köln, 1995) is a hefty tome (591 pp) and has been well reviewed but it is, of course, in German, a language which is not my strongest! If any music book should have an English edition, this is the one - but it probably won't happen.

[Dundonnell]

My two staples are-
Eric Gilder: "Dictionary of Composers and their Music"(Sphere, 1987)
Mark Morris: "The Pimlico Dictionary of Twentieth Century Composers"(Pimlico, 1999)

[semloh]

If we are just talking about reference books, then:

A Critical Dictionary of Composers & Their Music
American Composers 1912-1932 (1932)
American Composers of The Time (1963)
British Musical Biography (Brown & Stratton 1897)
Contemporary American Composers (1976)
Contemporary Composers (Mason, 1918)
Contemporary Russian Composers (1917)
Dictionary of Composers and Their Music (Gilder)
Famous American Composers (1900)
Grove Dictionary of Music (various eds. from 1900 onwards)
Modern Composers of Europe (1914)
Modern music, published by the League of Composers, 1924-1946, Vol.1
Modern music, published by the League of Composers, 1924-1946, Vol.2
Modern Russian Composers (1927)
Music under the Soviets - the agony of an art (1955)
Musical Portraits - interpretations of twenty modern composers (1920)
The American Symphony Orchestra - a social history of musical taste (1951)
The Standard Symphonies (Upton, 1899)
Women Composers (1902)

As you can see, it's mostly old, public domain stuff, and for modern composers and their music I tend to rely on the web.

I also have several reference works on copyright and the legal and moral rights of artists/authors, as well as works on the philosophy of music, musicology, ethnomusicology, and so on, but they tend to be just for general reading.

[albion]

Thanks, Colin and semloh for the responses to the opening question!

British Musical Biography (Brown & Stratton 1897)

Before the advent of the internet I drooled over (not literally you understand) and coveted this book in the John Rylands library. Then abebooks came along and ...

I also have several reference works on copyright and the legal and moral rights of artists/authors

Every home should have one.

[John H White]

Apart from scores of scores, my music reference library includes "The Oxford Companion to Music", Tovey's "Essays in Musical Analysis" (which includes a piece on Rontgen's Edinburgh Symphony), "The Symphonies of Robert Simpson" edited by Robert Matthew-Walker, Clive Brown on "Louis Spohr", Fitz Spiegl's book of "Musical Blunders"( this includes lots of little known facts about various  composers and performers including Hans Rott), Berlioz's autobiography and "Treatise on Instrumentatation" with extra notes by Richard Strauss together with lots of books on music theory and composition including most of Ebenezer Prout's works.

[semloh]

.......Fitz Spiegl's book of "Musical Blunders"( this includes lots of little known facts about various  composers and performers including Hans Rott) ......

Your books are obvious testimony to good taste, John. 

But, nice to see you've still got room for some fun in the form of Fritz Spiegl. I don't know Musical Blunders, but I'm sure it's as equally weird and wonderful as the one I do have - Music Through the Looking Glass. It was this that alerted me to the long-standing rumour - wholly without foundation, of course - that Sousa was actually a Japanese man by the name of 'So', who added 'usa' to his name following his naturalization as an American! 
It must have been a rumour spread by the Flat Earth Society! 

[jerfilm]

Maybe be a little less a reference book and more of a darned good read is Harold C Schonberg's "The Great Pianists - Mozart to the present".    This book turned me on to the likes of Kalkbrenner, Moscheles, Hummel and many others for which I am eternally grateful to the late New York Times critic.....

Jerry

[semloh]

Thanks, Colin and semloh for the responses to the opening question!

British Musical Biography (Brown & Stratton 1897)

Before the advent of the internet I drooled over (not literally you understand) and coveted this book in the John Rylands library. Then abebooks came along and ...

Lucky man, Albion! I think the Rylands is one of Manchester's greatest treasures. 

I expect you know that Brown & Stratton is now out of copyright and can be legally downloaded for free from the web, along with most of the other books in my list. 

I know there's nothing like having the real book in your hands, but it does make it searchable - and you can instantly locate references to your search term. Which is a useful way of finding out what influence particular composers had on others.... I was able to identify Wingham's pupils that way.

By the way, your message initially confused me    ....

Thanks, Colin and semloh for the responses to the opening question!

.... as I am both semloh and Colin!!

[Dundonnell]

It gets tricky doesn't it when members are in private correspondence with each other and thereby learn each others christian names. They then start using these in posts....which can get confusing, I suppose

Nice to see another 'Colin' on here though

[albion]

there's nothing like having the real book in your hands

Quite so - I like tangible objects that have or will shortly have some history to them: books that can be read in a comfy chair (or in bed) win over eye-straining computer screens and whirring hard-drives; likewise downloads are no match for well-produced CDs with booklet-notes and pretty covers...

... unless, of course, the price is prohibitive or the repertoire is otherwise unavailable!

[eschiss1]

Have collected books over some years in a haphazard fashion, but I value (I'm not actually sure how well these relate to the thread)
*my used copy of Meyer's "English Chamber Music: The History of a Great Art" (apologies for approximate title, will find and edit in. Fairly early edition, I think- also will check... bought during my first visit to London, maybe around 1993.)
*Schoenberg's Style and Idea
*Schoenberg's Structural Functions of Harmony
*The same's Theory of Harmony
*Forsyth's Orchestration (Dover reprint)
*Walker's Liszt: The Weimar Years
*Girdlestone's Mozart and his Piano Concertos (Dover repr.)
*Alfred Einstein's Mozart: His Character, His Work (much used and mistreated book now.)
*Oxford Concise (? Concise Oxford?) Dictionary of Classical Music (... ditto.)
*1991(ish?) Penguin Guide. (much ditto, poor thing.)
*Rapoport - The compositions of Vagn Holmboe : a catalog of works and recordings with indexes of persons and titles
*Rapoport, ed. - Sorabji: A Critical Celebration
*Frankel Society booklet with list of works, movies contributed to, etc.
*to be continued I suspect...

[Greg K]

For chamber music I still find Cobbett's volumes useful, but even moreso Arthur Cohn's massive 4 volume "Literature of Chamber Music".